Top History Podcasts

“The Flamethrowers” captures the punch-you-in-the-mouth energy and sound of right-wing talk radio. Host Justin Ling takes us from the fringe preachers and conspiracy peddlers of the 1920s to the political firestorm that rages today. With humour and candour, Ling examines the appeal of broadcasters like Rush Limbaugh, who found a sleeping audience, radicalized it, and became an accidental kingmaker — culminating in the election of Donald Trump.

Western Edition -- a podcast from Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West and hosted by its director William Deverell, historian of the American West -- seeks to engage Angelenos, Californians, and Westerners as critical thinkers, conscious consumers, and informed community members. The podcast tells the fascinating stories of the people and communities of our region, connecting the past to the present, and demonstrating the tightly woven fabric of history. 

The forth season, Hidden Pasadena, digs deep into the “Crown City” of the San Gabriel Valley.

The third season, Memorializing the West, explored historical memory, commemoration, and memorialization across the American West. 

The second season, L.A. Chinatown, examined the past, present, and future of one of L.A.’s oldest neighborhoods and one of the first Chinese American cultural centers in the U.S.  The first season, The West on Fire, looked at the West’s relationship with fire. 

Western Edition is produced by Avishay Artsy, Katie Dunham, Jessica Kim, Elizabeth Logan, and Eryn Hoffman. Western Edition is a production of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

A podcast about people and events in American history you may not know much about. Yet.

Experience the legacy of the world’s most iconic airline, Pan American World Airways! This program brings Pan Am’s 64-year history to life through engaging storytelling and insightful interviews with a wide range of voices connected to Pan Am’s story. Historian Tom Betti created and hosted Seasons 1 through 5, a celebrated run of history and humanities storytelling that earned numerous Muse Creative and Vega Digital awards, and the podcast continues in Season 6 with new hosts and a new creative team. The Pan Am Podcast is brought to you by the Pan Am Museum in Garden City, New York and is sponsored by the generous personal support of Mr. Adam Aron, CEO of AMC Theatres and President of the Pan Am Historical Foundation. The Pan Am Museum Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization and would appreciate your consideration of tax-deductible donations to support our work.

Through a series of riveting, complex narratives, LONG SHADOW makes sense of what people know — and what they thought they knew — about the most pivotal moments in U.S. history, including Waco, Columbine, Y2K, 9/11, COVID-19, January 6, and beyond. 

Hosted by Pulitzer-finalist historian, author, and journalist Garrett Graff, this Peabody-nominated podcast has been called “rigorous, authoritative, and an electrifying listen” by the Financial Times and honored as one of the year's best podcasts by The Atlantic, Audible, Mashable, Rolling Stone, and The Week. A winner of the Edward R. Murrow Award and the RFK Human Rights Journalism Award, it has also been honored with eight Signal Awards, including for Best History, Best Documentary, Best Technology, and Best Activism, Public Service, & Social Impact Podcast.

The second season of LONG SHADOW has been added to the history program at the University of Houston and the third season has been integrated into Harvard Law School's curriculum on the Second Amendment.

Season 4

LONG SHADOW: BREAKING THE INTERNET

When was the last time you felt good about the internet? Today’s online landscape is a harrowing one. People screaming at each other on social media. Violent videos going viral. Cyberbullying, racism, misogyny. Back in the day, the web gave power to the people, and going online could actually be fun.

LONG SHADOW: BREAKING THE INTERNET retraces 30 years of web history — a tangle of GIFs, blogs, apps, and hashtags — to answer the bewildering question many ask when they go online today: “How did we get here?”

It’s the story of mankind’s greatest invention, a tool that gave everyone access to all the world’s information and unlocked democracy across the globe. But LONG SHADOW: BREAKING THE INTERNET is also about the biggest crisis facing society today: how the web's unlimited feed of data morphed into a firehose of hoaxes, conspiracy theories, and lies that divided Americans over things we once agreed on, like science, diversity, and even democracy itself.

Chronicling innovations, revolutions, cyber attacks, and meltdowns across seven episodes, this limited series podcast untangles the web in a way you’ve never considered before. Featuring memes and moments you know — like when the world became transfixed by the color of a dress — and others you don’t, but should — like how people sent death threats to the woman who posted that meme online — LONG SHADOW: BREAKING THE INTERNET both scales the heights of internet virality and plumbs the depths of social media's depravity.

Within weeks of its launch in 2021, LONG SHADOW became a No. 1 history show on Apple Podcasts, and its first season, 9/11’s LINGERING QUESTIONS, won Best History Podcast at the inaugural Signal Awards. Its second season, RISE OF THE AMERICAN FAR RIGHT, was named Best Podcast at the 2024 Edward R. Murrow Awards. IN GUNS WE TRUST, the show’s third season produced in collaboration with The Trace, was nominated for a Peabody Award and awarded the RFK Human Rights Journalism Award for its coverage of America’s gun violence epidemic.

LONG SHADOW: BREAKING THE INTERNET premiered June 24, 2025 and won three Signal Awards (for Best Technology, Documentary, and History podcast) as well as an Anthem Award for Best Responsible Technology Awareness.

LONG SHADOW is produced by the award-winning journalism studio Long Lead and distributed by PRX.

For more visit www.longlead.com and www.longshadowpodcast.com.

A father-daughter podcast where I interview my father, Robert Chau, on exactly how he survived and escaped the Khmer Rouge aka 1970's Cambodian Genocide. We will follow along his journey on how a starving boy crawling out of Cambodia become a serial American entrepreneur. After 50 years, he deserves a chance to finally share his story.